[MacRuby-devel] Fwd: OS X10.9 & MacRuby's future...

david kramf dakr.012 at gmail.com
Fri May 17 05:19:53 PDT 2013


Is RubyMotion  a full Ruby. Does it support reflection and metaprograming?
Thanks, David Kramf

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Francis Chong <francis at ignition.hk>
> Subject: Re: [MacRuby-devel] OS X10.9 & MacRuby's future...
> Date: May 17, 2013 2:15:40 PM GMT+03:00
> To: "MacRuby development discussions." <macruby-devel at lists.macosforge.org>
> Reply-To: "MacRuby development discussions." <macruby-devel at lists.macosforge.org>
> 
> While I'm really happy about OS X support on RubyMotion, it is not a replacement for MacRuby. 
> 
> IMHO MacRuby is far superior:
> 
> It offer JIT compiler, you develop orders of magnitude faster as you dont need clean and rebuild every time.
> 
> You have full ruby compatibility, load standard library as you wish.
> 
> It loads gems and framework dynamically like what you would expected from regular ruby. 
> 
> You don't have to write new gems, or rewrite them. Many gems just work, even native ones could work.
> 
> You can use regular technique for meta programming, and generally you don't enter a uncanny valley between dynamic language and static build system.
> 
> Some of these limitations are inherited from RubyMotion due to iOS restriction, I don't see them going away anytime soon. 
> 
> That said, RubyMotion team is the ones who know most of MacRuby, and  their direction is not like MacRuby in past. If you are going to develop Mac app, your best choice is probably go RubyMotion, or just use Objective-C.
>> Sent from Mailbox for iPhone
> 
> 
> On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 7:02 AM, Carolyn Ann Grant <carolyn.ann.grant at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I've changed my mind. :-)
> 
> I translated part of a project into Obj-C, and it just wasn't the same. I *like* the Ruby language, and while MacRuby has its foibles, it's still very good.
> 
> Here's my reasoning: Apple isn't going to do a consumer release of 10.9 any time soon - according to the press reports I've read, it's being tested by them, but the first developer release isn't expected until WWDC in June. There's going to be a round of beta's, release candidates and so on, as per normal, and then it'll have the consumer release, maybe by October, perhaps November. I'm certainly not expecting anything as early as September! 
> 
> Now, if I keep up with using MacRuby, I then have the option of either expanding my knowledge of MacRuby internals in meantime *and* be in a position to use RubyMotion. If I switch to Obj-C now, switching to RubyMotion or a newer MacRuby later will be either more work or not worth it. Meanwhile, MacRuby works on Mountain Lion and while, as I said, it has it foibles, it's still a lot more pleasurable writing code in Ruby than it is in Obj-C! 
> 
> I think that makes sense?
> 
> Thanks again for the conversation! :-)
> Carolyn
> 
>  
> On May 16, 2013, at 3:05 PM, Carolyn Ann Grant <carolyn.ann.grant at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Thanks, Mark!
>> 
>> Yeah, I know the price is more than reasonable, Mark, it's just that right now, we're not in a position to afford much of anything. Without getting too personal, we're still digging out from the Great Recession, which hit my family pretty hard. (As they say in DC, "mistakes were made", and I seem to have gone out of my way to make sure they were doozies!) I agree that HipByte is likely to work toward their own success; I'll definitely be looking at them when I can. 
>> 
>> I think at this point, I have to stick to Objective-C, as much as I really don't want to. Ruby is just so much better! As for why, I need to have confidence that I'm not investing a large amount of time and effort into something that I'll have to abandon when OS X 10.9 comes out. I've chased more than a few promising technologies, only to see them wither on the vine, so to speak. I've made such a habit of it, that I was beginning to think that if I was interested in something, it was likely on its way out! At this point, I simply can't afford to do that again. So while I'm not delighted to be writing code in Obj-C, at least I know it's going to be around for a few years. And I don't have to try and figure out what I did wrong with bridge support files, etc.
>> 
>> I am disappointed, and I do wish I had the time and knowledge to further MacRuby, but I have to prioritize what gets my attention and what I'd like to do but can't.
>> 
>> Thank you, all! :-)
>> 
>> /Carolyn
>> 
>> On May 16, 2013, at 2:38 PM, Mark Villacampa <markvjal at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> I'm a longtime RubyMotion user, and MacRuby user before that. I want to share my view as to what is the current status of MacRuby and what can happen in the future.
>>> 
>>> The momentum around MacRuby has been inexistent for almost a year and a half. That is, since Laurent Sansonetti (the original creator of MacRuby) left Apple, and that left the project without maintainers who were being paid to work on it. Only Watson and a couple other maintainers have been doing maintenance work and fixing a couple of bugs.
>>> 
>>> Since nobody is being paid to maintain it, and (AFAIK) there is no company/individual whose main/critical systems depended on MacRuby, nobody has taken over the project. This is pretty much a chicken-egg situation.
>>> 
>>> That said, a year ago, Laurent launched RubyMotion, a product based on MacRuby which introduces many new features, such as an ARC based memory model, and iOS support (dropping OSX support). Just a few days ago, in the first anniversary of RubyMotion, they introduced OSX support.
>>> 
>>> Rubymotion is not open source, and the license costs 200$, plus an annual renewal fee of 99$. Two reasons that people sometimes argue for not investing in RM are:
>>> 
>>> - "It's closed source, it might disappear at any moment": Actually, RubyMotion is probably more likely to stay in the long term than MacRuby was at the beginning. Despite Apple being a huge company, MacRuby was kind of an experiment that they could kill at any moment. For HipByte (the company behind Rubymotion), Rubymotion is its main product and the one that pays its employees. They are way more interested in watching RM succeed than Apple was in watching MacRuby succeed.
>>> 
>>> - "It's too expensive": for playing around or releasing a pet project or free app that is not one of your ways of income, that might be the case. However, for a company or individual that wants to develop a product from which they hope to get some revenue, that price is ridiculous. I've seen PHP libraries for creating web forms more expensive than RubyMotion (nothing against those libraries). We're talking about a static compiler and a whole toolchain for developing iOS apps. If you're a student and want to play around with RubyMotion, there is a student discount available (send them an email for more information).
>>> 
>>> So my conclusion is: If you want to develop OSX applications and you liked MacRuby, invest in getting a RubyMotion license, you probably won't be disappointed.
>>> 
>>> Mark.
>>> 
>>> On Thursday, May 16, 2013 at 8:01 PM, Christopher S Martin wrote:
>>> 
>>>> They recently added support for OS X to rubymotion: http://blog.rubymotion.com/post/49943751398/rubymotion-goes-2-0-and-gets-os-x-support-templates
>>>> That said, since rubymotion is (I believe) based off of macruby with some additions specifically around static compilation of apps, I don't know if the issues around GC/ARC would be any better in rubymotion on OS X, as I've only used it for iOS.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Jeff Dyck <fsjjeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Just wanted to add a ditto to this - I'm looking at migrating some old AppleScript Studio projects to MacRuby - my initial testing about a year ago was great, but it seems the stability of MacRuby as a development platform is in question to me at least... I've already been abandoned by AppleScript Studio, don't really want to have to go through relearning a new language and migrating projects a third time.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I'm seeing a few comments on RubyMotion - does that work for developing OS X projects as well?  I was under the impression that was for iOS only, but I can't say I've looked into it much.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Jeff
>>>>> 
>>>>> On May 16, 2013, at 10:40 AM, Michael Shantzis <michael at shantzis.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> > Hello all (and especially Carolyn),
>>>>> >
>>>>> > I just want to say that I have the same question, specifically regarding the
>>>>> > GC/ARC issue.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > The context in which this came up was very revealing. I had been developing a
>>>>> > fairly complex Cocoa project (ARC enabled) and decided that I had to add some tests.
>>>>> > Using MacRuby seemed like the natural solution. I quickly noticed, though, that I
>>>>> > couldn't.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Is there still any momentum behind MacRuby?  Is there any solution to the issue
>>>>> > of mixing it with ARC?  I really hope the answer to these two questions is "yes."
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Thank you,
>>>>> > Michael Shantzis
>>>>> >
>>>>> >
>>>>> > On May 16, 2013, at 8:32 AM, Carolyn Ann Grant <carolyn.ann.grant at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> >
>>>>> >> Hi, I've got a question about the future of MacRuby. I like it, and have started working on a project or two using it, but I've been reading about GC and ARC, Ruby 2.0, RubyMotion and so on, and wonder where MacRuby is going? I'm quite concerned because I've put a good amount of time into my MacRuby projects.
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >> I wish I had the knowledge and skill to help with MacRuby - I really do like it! - but unfortunately I don't. I also don't want to invest a lot of further time in MacRuby if it's not going anywhere. (And I really can't spare the $200 it would take to buy RubyMotion.)
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >> I know this comes across as a bit impertinent, but I really would like to know what's happening with MacRuby development. Thanks!
>>>>> >> _______________________________________________
>>>>> >> MacRuby-devel mailing list
>>>>> >> MacRuby-devel at lists.macosforge.org
>>>>> >> https://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/macruby-devel
>>>>> >
>>>>> > _______________________________________________
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>>>>> 
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